Overtraining cautionary tale. For those who exercise freq.

So this is a cautionary tale for people who exercise frequently and don't know what overtraining is. From personal experience. So it's going to be a little lengthy but if you exercise and never heard of it then read it.

I'm going to try to show how it can sneak up on you, how you can recognize it, and why it's important to be aware of it. I'm not a doctor. I had never heard of it and to me it didn't feel all that serious or pressing until it suddenly got pretty serious.

Five years ago I started to get into a more intense training regime. Pretty quickly I was training for 6 days a week and the 7th day would be my recovery day but I would still stretch and stuff. Of course there were days that I couldn't or didn't feel well so I took those days off to stop myself from pushing too hard. Which went very well. Extremely well. Both for my body and mind it was very nice to let it all out for 40 minutes to an hour a day. (Overtraining has to do with too little downtime for your body to recover, which can also happen if you do frequent but short or light exercises.)

After about three years I started to experience mornings when my body felt real sleepy. And I slept pretty irregularly anyway so that wasn't too odd. (Because of stress, a likely catalyst for overtraining.) I took those days off (or sometimes tried a little to see how it went) and I felt real good about that and the next day I could go back to training. (That was probably the first sign.)

Very slowly and with a lot of time in between, this sometimes turned into two days of required rest before I was able to exercise well again. I didn't think much of it. I barely noticed it. At some point halfway through 2017 I had one of those periods and I couldn't do 1/5th of my normal training. This time it felt more odd than usual. I was out of breath and sweating all over. Like I went through a hard day of training but I just finished my warming up and then some. I thought maybe I was a little ill, maybe tired. Waited a couple days. Fine again. (If you ever feel that, then immediately stop exercising and readjust your training schedule to allow for more recovery time.)

For a few weeks I was fine. And then it happened again. Another few weeks, and again. There was enough time in between where everything went well that I thought nothing of it. And I believe by the end of August it happened again but this time, after a couple days of rest nothing changed. I could still only do about 1/5th of my normal training after taking a long good rest... and it felt absolutely horrible. I felt like puking after doing a couple minutes of exercise. I was shaking and felt cold.

So I tried more rest days, to get back into it very slowly. But no matter how long I waited I couldn't get back to doing a full exercise. And by doing this (in my mind very) carefully for several weeks (even though it felt like it should be nothing because I was used to training so much harder) I made things way worse.

I got other symptoms that I couldn't place. I felt real sad all the time, felt my heartbeat all over my body for several hours a day, woke up one night 4 am with my chest burning like hell and a very loud irregular heart beat. That was scary. And after that I constantly got out of breath by doing things as simple as walking down the stairs. Started shivering at random times, sometimes after minimal exertion (like after standing a couple minutes). My eyes would keep closing when trying to jog in place. So I went to a doctor who checked my heart. Didn't have a heart attack, heart was fine, lungs were fine. Blood was fine. The only surprising thing about the results was how perfectly fine they were. Could be overtraining.

Looked into that. By that time I did have all the symptoms that I could find. So I tried resting a couple weeks (which I thought was a very very long time to not exercise) and then started to walk, and then getting on the bike, and then it got worse again. Waiting a month, feeling real bad about it and worried about losing progress, doing the same thing, got worse again. back to square one.

Yeah. So after over half a year of being unable to exercise properly I'm still at square one. Sports doctor told me to do nothing that raises the heartbeat for the next 3 months. Walking is OK but anything worse than that I should avoid. And that prompted me to post this, because of all the injuries and things that ever happened to me while trying to exercise this has to be the most demotivating thing. And ALL of this could have been avoided if I were aware of overtraining and would have taken a couple months off the moment when my body started to act a little weird, and if I had (permanently!) adjusted my schedule to include more rest. Then I would have been OK again a couple months ago instead of going through 6 months of feeling real bad about myself and another couple months of doing nothing.

So when people tell you that overtraining is bad and you should avoid it... listen, it's bad and you should avoid it.

TLDR: It's something that happens because of too little rest time. Training = breaking, rest = building. Symptoms are vague, can sneak up on you. When you feel you want/need to take breaks from doing/starting a workout a couple times per, say, 2 months, adjust your schedule to include more rest or you could suddenly without further warning find yourself in a bad spot. In that case, stop training entirely for a couple months to be absolutely sure you fully recover before starting a workout and be sure to permanently adjust your schedule to include more rest. (Don't 'try' anyway during the couple months rest!)

I'm assuming you're talking about weight training and cardio, because disciplines like Tai Chi, Yoga or just basic stretching can be done everyday. I'm sorry to hear about your issue, but it's a common problem in the fitness community. The good thing about your problem is that you will learn from the experience and mostlikely come back even better. The one thing I learned early on when I started training was that your biggest gains come from your rest and nutrition, but at the same time, I can understand how most people would overlook those 2 key factors until they weren't seeing any real gains from their training or an injury.

shit that sounds grim.

i've gone through periods of real lethargy after training 6-7 days per week. i forced myself to take weekends off but it took a while to adjust. if i'd not been (to the gym) for a day i started to feel like i was losing strength and piling weight on. it was all in my head, but it did used to really bother me. i can imagine that it's really difficult for you in that regard, going from all that training to none at all. sounds like it's absolutely the right thing for you to do though

It's what I have always told people when it comes to exercising and working out. Do NOT overdo it. Resting is just as important as the physical training. Let's face it, going to the gym is a fad for people who spent a large portion of their lives being lazy and unhealthy. These people want to feel the validation of taking selfies on a treadmill more than they actually know the steps to being healthy. It feels cool to go to the gym for these people, yet most of them completely lack the understanding what it means to get healthy and get in shape. A lot of people think just hopping on a treadmill until they collapse or forcing the heaviest weights is the way to go when it is in fact DANGEROUS for your body.

Guess what? If your goal is to build muscle and all you do is pump iron six days a week without balancing proper nutrition and rest into your daily life, your body is going to start getting confused and burn away your muscle growth instead of fat. It is possible to have a degenerative effect from over-training.

Let's just say you have a friend named Jimmy with a very similar body type to yours, and both of you started hitting the gym about eight months ago and looking at both of you, you notice he managed to become way more built than you in that time frame. What happened? There's always going to be the likeliness of genetics taking role, but it also has a lot to do with how you two managed to balance a healthy lifestyle. Maybe Jimmy had a healthy balance of his nutrition, exercise and rest whereas maybe you had an imbalance of such components.

Make sure you always have a proper balance of these three components. Resting is just as important as exercising, and if you forfeit your rest time it will pose not only degenerative progress but potential health risks.

Yes. A few things to remember when it comes to weight training:

1. Many routines that you see online are for people on performance enhancing drugs. They can do more (sometimes MUCH MORE) volume and recover from it than natural lifters.

2. Don't train the same muscles two days in a row.

3. Your body can only handle so much volume per week and still recover. Your recovery time is when your body heals and grows.

4. I've found using a push/pull routine works best for me. I'll do push (chest shoulders triceps) on Saturdays and Tuesdays. Pull (legs, back, biceps, abs) on Sundays and Wednesdays. Every day not listed is an off day.

5. I currently follow a slightly modified Wendler's 5/3/1 routine, which you can see above is four days a week. In my younger days, I would go about 7-8 weeks, then take a week completely off for more recovery. Now at 41, I do 3 weeks of 531, 4th week is a deload week per 531, then go another 3 weeks of 531. After that, I take a week completely off.

6. Cardio can vary a lot based on your goals, but I currently just keep my heartrate about 135 for 20 minutes 3-4 times a week. Watching to make sure my legs recover from both the lifting and cardio. I've also done sprints, jump rope, and varies forms of HIIT in the past.

7. As a side note, I've noticed so many parents putting their kids in year round sports, two sports at the same time, and all kinds of other nonsense. This has lead to the rise in kids injuries IMHO. It's very important for kids to get exercise, but their growing bodies need time to heal and GROW. Let, no MAKE them take time off to recover from sports and don't let them overdo it throughout the year.

I think I am to lazy for this to be a problem...

Atm trying to work out 4 times a week. Twice upper body, twice lower body and back.

I'm too lazy to read all of that. I've done well with avoiding soda and other junk food and going for long walks so I think I'll stick to what I'm doing.

I don't really do strenuous workouts. when it's too hot outside, it's either an hour on the elliptical or 30 minutes on the treadmill. I follow those up with 15-pts basketball scrimmage or if there's no one else around, I do 100 free throws or play solo around the world.

When the weather is cooler like now, I ride the bike on the numerous paved bike trails. No set goal. Just bike around admiring the scenery. If I feel like finishing early or if my butt starts to hurt from sitting on the saddle, I turn around and go home. Anyway, I could be gone anywhere from 1 to 3 hours.

If I don't feel like doing any of the above, I just juggle a soccerball. Just like the above, if I feel like quitting early, I do. The short end of ball juggling is 5 minutes and the longest is a little over 15 minutes. I don't go longer because I'm already drenched in sweat within the first few minutes.

The main thing is, I don't push myself too hard. If my body says to quit early, I do. I have no set goals. Just do it until I'm not in the mood anymore. It's not like I have standards to meet.

I tend to do about three sets of push-ups (depends on how I do them. 20-40 a set) every night and take the weekends off. I do a bit of curling if I can (only 20 lb weights). So far, so good. Not looking to be buff or toned or anything. Just want to keep the blubber off.

@bigfootpart2 Sorry, I added a TLDR bit.

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The kind of exercise I was doing was just high intensity fitness/pilates (using mostly bodyweight). I wanted to improve on all fronts including my agility because I'm not very bendy and I got into this because it felt very challenging in all places throughout a week and I love that.

The initial symptoms online sound way easier to notice than they really are. I hope this just prevents someone else from going through it.

@todddow Thanks for your tips, I'll look into that. I didn't use any performance enhancing stuff. Measuring my heartbeat during a workout could be a good idea because I know I'm prone to going overboard.

In the words of the great Lee Haney..."Stimulate, not Annihilate."

:)

This seems to be not known until boys get out of high school, mature, and stop caring about what they "bench." Then the real results come in.

Diet is 80 percent of it. If we are just talking about general health, and not sport specific stuff.

I work an intense warehouse job and it used to be 4 10-hour stretches of intense work, and in 30 degree and -20 degree temperatures. I made sure to rest on my days off. Ice my knees and feet. I only left because my previous bosses tried to fabricate reasons for firing me. Still work for same company, different location, only part time. I lost up to 60-65 lbs working there in first few months.